In-Universe

In its original form, tropes are storytelling devices meant to convey a concept to an audience. The overwhelming majority of tropes on this site are specifically that: devices that can be recreated by an aspiring author who visits this wiki. Other tropes are about identifying how the audience reacts to an event, and are often an unintended side-effect of the use of a trope. If common enough, there are separate tropes for the same thing from two points of view. Some tropes tend to blur that line where both the characters within the story and the audience react the same way to the use of the trope, which sometimes involve a Lampshade Hanging.

In this wiki you will find the use of the comment "in-universe" by someone saying "This trope was used in-universe when..." and that is where a trope more often thought of as an audience reaction is used within the story. One such use is the Invoked Trope, where the characters actively set up the trope in advance, though that happens more often with storytelling tropes.

For an example, Suspiciously Similar Substitute is more often a fan reaction to a replacement character. The reaction is often "You're mostly the same as the previous character, but you're not the one I remember and love." The series Star Wars: The Clone Wars has an episode where R2D2 is lost in battle and Anakin is given a new (virtually identical) droid. He ends up having the same reaction and attitude as most fans have with a replacement character.

Word of advice to prospective writers. Despite what may be often believed, even without a Lampshade, writers should be aware of the tropes they are using and how people will react to it. What separates Good Writing and Bad Writing is how much effort there is put into cleaning up the way tropes are used. Do not neglect the In-universe reasons. Give them a Hand Wave at least. Your readers will not forgive you if you don't.